BuzzFeed News revealed in a report Wednesday that it has been looking into sexual misconduct allegations against Neil deGrasse Tyson for “nearly three years.” After a fourth woman came forward to level allegations against the famed astrophysicist, the outlet has now presented its findings.
“Over the course of nearly three years, BuzzFeed News has spoken with more than 30 people for this story, including the alleged victims and their families, Cosmos crew members, and graduate students and professors who were at UT Austin 30 years ago. Dozens more from that time did not reply to requests for interviews,” BuzzFeed’s Azeen Ghorayshi reports.
“Most of the people interviewed lamented the prospect that damaging allegations might take down the world’s most famous living scientist — and perhaps the most famous black scientist in history — beloved for eviscerating so many of the stereotypes of the stuffy, out-of-touch academic,” she adds. “But for [accusers Ashley] Watson and [Katelyn] Allers, the tragedy was the loss of a different black scientist: [Tchiya] Amet.”
The report, titled “Nobody Believed Neil deGrasse Tyson’s First Accuser. Now There Are Three More,” presents a summary of the three new accusations of sexual harassment against Tyson, but focuses primarily on his first accuser, Amet, who first aired her accusations in a blog post in October 2014, accusations since published by Patheos over a year ago but that went largely dismissed amid attacks on her credibility. – READ MORE